In eight hundred cities, Canadians have just demonstrated that they love culture. They did so by engaging in seven thousand events/activities. This has not been easy. The celebrations were frequently interrupted by boring anti-elitist pedants who rejected the official definition of the word “culture”as high-minded, elevating entertainments – presumably excluding sports – whereas culture really meant, so they said, “everything.”
The award-winning host and co-creator of CBC radio program Q, Jian Ghomeshi – who was born into a Muslim family and who grew up in a Jewish community – put it this way:
“Culture is who we are. It is our identity. There are local cultures across this diverse and fascinating land, there are founding languages and traditions, and there is also on a macro level, I believe, a distinctly Canadian culture. Without it we are faceless and uninteresting. Without our collective history of art, music, design, dance, languages, foods, poetry and plays (to name a few areas) – and the ‘two solitudes’ – we have very little binding us. Without our new artists, creative class and cultural leaders, we have few ways to determine our future path. It is our culture that makes me a proud Canadian. It is that culture that I believe we should be screaming from the rooftops to support, protect, and grow.”
Source: Huffington Post, Canada, September 20
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
The word used to denote “high art” of all kinds, philosophy, history, languages. Nowadays it seems to mean souvlaki and whatever the flavour-of-the-month in “world music” is. At root, it means care for anything living, growing, as in agriculture, silviculture, bacterial culture. And in the broader sense (art, music, literature,…) it comes to mean not just the caring, the growing, but also that which is cared for or grown. In this sense I suppose it has now come to mean not quite “everything”, but arguably everything in which more than a few people take an interest.
I love culture. I love nature. I love people. I love travel. I love food. I love democracy. I love love. I love everything. But most of all I love spontaneous self-directed slogan-free days. Somehow everything seems better without a day to celebrate it.
Not for me. On Sundays I celebrate the sun, on Mondays the moon, on Tuesday (Dienstag) servant girls, on Wednesday (Mercredi, Mittwoch) mediocrity, on Thursday the god Tor and Thunder (Donnerstag), on Friday freedom and on Saturday – why not? – satellites.
Fundamentally, there is the sense of growth or growing in the word culture as in agriculture or culturing bacteria in a petri dish. The modern, extended meaning probably implies the growth of the mind. Military culture, like martial music, may be an oxymoron.
I found that the reading Eric chose made much more sense when the word “community” was substituted for “culture”. In any case, both are noble aspirations..
One of the problems with Canada is that the only neighbours we have ignore us. Isn’t it great when the Americans decide to puncture our pretentions? What a country we’d be if it happened more often!
Dick Nielsen